Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

Employment chief Anna Diamantopoulou has now ordered the Netherlands to repay 157 million euro it received under the programme, saying: “There have clearly been serious problems with the management of the social fund.

“The frequency of the irregularities found confirmed the Commission’s view that they were of a systematic nature.”

Although there are no accusations of fraud, the Union executive says the former Dutch public employment service was guilty of numerous irregularities between 1994-96 when it managed financial aid from the fund.

The money had been earmarked for creating new jobs and training programmes for the unemployed.

Diamantopoulou says the investigation revealed that expenditure and training hours declared had been “substantially” increased compared to spending and hours actually incurred.

She says the government agency also failed to keep the proper paperwork and that the 45 job-creation projects paid for from the fund in the mid-1990s were executed carelessly.

Irregularities of this scale have not been found in the audits of structural funds in other EU countries and the request for more than 150 million euro to be repaid is one of the largest in the history of the social fund.

The irregularities occurred during a period of low unemployment in the Netherlands.

The investigation was triggered in April 1999 when a visit from Commission officials in the Netherlands found that seven out of eight projects had clear errors.

Diamantopoulou decided to order repayment of the social fund money after consulting with fellow Commissioners Michel Barnier and Franz Fischler, responsible for the regional and agriculture funds respectively.

However, she says she is now satisfied with the steps taken by the Dutch authorities to tighten internal rules and procedures on future funding.

Project selection and approval has been centralised and put under the direct responsibility of the Dutch social affairs ministry.

“These measures should ensure a correct and efficient implementation of the social fund aid for the period up to 2006,” she said.